Pons never gave more than a
hundred francs for any purchase. If he laid out as much as fifty
francs, he was careful to assure himself beforehand that the object
was worth three thousand. The most beautiful thing in the world, if it
cost three hundred francs, did not exist for Pons. Rare had been his
bargains; but he possessed the three qualifications for success--a
stag's legs, an idler's disregard of time, and the patience of a Jew.
This system, carried out for forty years, in Rome or Paris alike, had
borne its fruits. Since Pons returned from Italy, he had regularly
spent about two thousand francs a year upon a collection of
masterpieces of every sort and description, a collection hidden away
from all eyes but his own; and now his catalogue had reached the
incredible number of 1907. Wandering about Paris between 1811 and
1816, he had picked up many a treasure for ten francs, which would
fetch a thousand or twelve hundred to-day. Some forty-five thousand
canvases change hands annually in Paris picture sales, and these Pons
had sifted through year by year. Pons had Sevres porcelain, _pate
tendre_, bought of Auvergnats, those satellites of the Black Band who
sacked chateaux and carried off the marvels of Pompadour France in
their tumbril carts; he had, in fact, collected the drifted wreck of
the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries; he recognized the genius of
the French school, and discerned the merit of the Lepautres and
Lavallee-Poussins and the rest of the great obscure creators of the
Genre Louis Quinze and the Genre Louis Seize.
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